Medicine at University of Bristol Medical School & Interview Questions 2023

Key Aspects

🎓 Bristol Medicine Interview Questions & Topics 2023

It is fundamental that you prepare well for the Bristol Interview, this is because often the decision to award an offer or not solely depends on interview performance. They look at a number of key domains and topics in their interviews in 2023:

• Realistic interest in medicine

• Communication skills

• Volunteering experience

• Ability to talk in a calm, relaxed manner

• Life skills that you have gained

• Extra-curricular activities

💯 Bristol Medical Interview Questions Scoring in 2023

Each station will be marked independently of the other. The independent scores will form an average of each station, which then will make up your final interview score.

❓ Bristol Medical Interview Past Questions 2023

Please find below a list of suggested questions that could come up at your interview this year, created by our team to help guide your preparation. 

Motivation to study medicine

1. Why medicine?

2. Why Bristol?

3. What did you learn from your work experience?

4. What was unique about your work experience?

5. What qualities of a doctor did you see from your work experience?

6. What do you know about the Bristol Medicine course? How is it taught?

7. Why do you think you will be well suited to this course?

8. Why medicine and not dentistry or nursing?

9. Tell us about your volunteering

10. What are your hobbies?

11. What are the negatives of a career in medicine?

Personal Insight

1. Why should patients trust you?

2. What are your best qualities?

3. How do you manage stress?

4. Can you provide us with an example of a time when you demonstrated resilience?

5. Give us an example of a time when you demonstrated teamwork.

6. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

7. How would your friends describe you?

8. Tell us about an article that you have recently read.

9. Should doctors always tell the truth?

NHS & Local Area

1. What is the CQC?

2. What changes would you make to the NHS if you could?

3. What are the NHS values and why are they important?

4. What is it like to be a doctor?

5. What do you know about the local area here in Bristol?

6. How has COVID changed the way the NHS operates?

7. What do you think are going to be the long-term consequences of COVID on the NHS?

8. How does the healthcare system differ here compared to other areas in the UK?

Ethical Scenarios

1. Understanding of the four ethical principles

2. Understanding of the GMC’s good medical practice

3. What is the debate surrounding euthanasia, should it be legalised?

4. Who would you give this organ to? [Prioritisation]

5. If you notice that a colleague has turned up to work drunk, what would you do?

MMI Specific Stations

1. Data interpretation - picture scenarios assessing verbal skills and writing medical notes.

2. Drug calculation - calculate the dose of this drug to give a patient

🗣️ Bristol Medicine Interview Tips 2023

1. Practice picture scenarios - This is fundamental as it comes up year after year at Bristol, they love using picture scenarios in their interviews. Often you will need to describe a picture and explain what is happening, and occasionally explain its relevance to the NHS, this requires practising. “Here is a picture of two lungs, what do you see?”

2. Have examples ready to use: many of the questions asked at Bristol are example-based, ie, they require you to draw on certain examples from your personal life, medical work experience and medical volunteering to help make key points that the selectors are looking for. As such, it is paramount that you spend time learning about these examples and thinking about different scenarios that you can use at the interview. It is helpful if these scenarios are malleable and can be applied to a number of different questions e.g. being a football captain, deputy head girl or playing in the school orchestra.

3. Personal Attributes - Bristol is very likely to ask you about personal attributes during the MMI interview. As such it is paramount that you go through and learn these. Check out our interview guide for more information on this. 

4. Know the doctor training pathway: this is a common question that comes up at Bristol, fortunately, we have a guide to the NHS and the doctor’s training pathway in 2023 here.

5. Read the MMI instructions carefully - you get enough time to read the instructions provided before the MMI station. Make sure that you don’t miss anything from this. Try and plan how you will structure your answer thereafter in the reading time that you get. Therefore it is really important that you practice MMI questions and ensure that you think about your structure for as many questions as possible before your interview.

6. MMI Stations - remember that each MMI station at Bristol is independent of the other. Therefore it is paramount that you try to treat them as such, if you have a bad station, try to forget about it and reset for the next station, this gives you the best chance of scoring well overall. Read our ultimate guide to preparing for medicine MMIs here.

7. Know the Bristol Course - Bristol has a fairly unique course where they take a holistic approach to medicine. This means that there is early patient contact, with tutorials on both physical and mental health. Home visits are conducted from term one, which means that patients are seen in both hospital and community settings. They also teach via cadaveric dissection, which is fairly unique to Bristol medical school.

8. Know the local area - Bristol is a diverse region of England, with a number of local factors and diseases that is different from the rest of England. Ensure that you research both communicable and non-communicable diseases in the area. How might this impact healthcare provision in the area?

9. Welfare - Bristol places a big emphasis on the welfare of medical students. We would recommend doing some research on the different ways that this is managed and supported at the university, and think of questions that they could then ask that are related to this.

10. Reflect Well - the Bristol Medicine selectors love reflection, make sure that you are good at not just stating what you have learnt, but also how this helped and what you benefitted from, and what you will carry forward about this at medical school and in clinical medicine. This is especially true when reflecting on your medical work experience during the medicine interview.

11. Practice Role Plays: Role plays are unique to medicine MMI interviews as they do not tend to occur in panel interviews. The only way to ace these stations is to practice! There are so many different medicine role-play scenarios that can come up, such as breaking bad news in the medicine interview, it is paramount that you read about tips for answering role-play scenarios. You might want to also consider practising this with a medicine interview tutor, or booking a 1-1 online mock interview.

12. Don’t over-rehearse - this is a common theme amongst interview students and is very obvious to a trained examiner. As such, we would recommend focusing on the structure of your answer, and then naturally letting it flow when speaking to the answers, concentrating on the delivery of your interview answers. Read about our top tips for medicine interviews here. If you are struggling with this, consider booking sessions with an expert medicine interview tutor.

13. Learn about the non-academic societies at Bristol - this is really important and might augment your Why Medicine question as well as help you formulate an answer to how you will contribute to life at Bristol University. Spend time on their website, or looking at their instagram for ideas about societies that you could think about joining.

14. Learn Medical Ethics & NHS Hot Topics - it is extremely likely that you will be asked about medical ethics at a medicine interview at Bristol, so there is no excuse not to brush up on your knowledge on these topics, especially the four pillars of medical ethics. Learn how to provide a balanced argument on this. Check out some of our free articles on NHS Hot Topics here. It is good if you have an opinion on them, as long as you present a balanced and well-reasoned argument, ultimately, which side you choose does not matter, but is helpful to have. Check out our bank of 200+ medicine interview questions.

15. Learn the NHS Core Values - This can be drawn into different answers about personal qualities or qualities of a doctor, which has formed a feature of stations in the past, and a good understanding of these core values will help you stand out against others. It is important to know about the NHS in general for your medical interviews - read our article here on this.

16. Good Medical Practice - Bristol also puts emphasis on knowing the values and qualities of a good doctor, which can be found in this document and are likely to come up at the interview in the MMI stations. This is universal to many universities, and something that we always recommend students cover during their medicine interview preparation.